Balurghat in context: Street-network sprawl trends

The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Balurghat plotted against West Bengal and India. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Balurghat's incremental SNDi rose from 3.85 to 5.74 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Balurghat ranked 42nd out of 140 cities in West Bengal and 1020th out of 1868 in India as of 2020.

Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.

What about similarly populated cities?

• Barmer, India
• Kodarma, India
• Jianyang, China
• Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Sumedang, Indonesia
• Dalla, India

In new street additions, Balurghat and Barmer both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, while Sarajevo built increasingly disconnected streets over time. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Balurghat and Barmer have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.